One of the big questions we’ve gotten at MySurveyExpert is,

How long can a survey be?  How long SHOULD it be?

Usually we gauge this by how long the survey takes.

Most of the research shows that the absolute MAXIMUM you can push people is 15 minutes.

But that’s actually a pretty long survey.    It can be done, but you’d better offer a KILLER incentive.

• I recently did a survey for a client that averaged about 20 minutes.
• We got 800 responses (from a big list), which was good.
• Here’s how we got such a good response:  She offered a $40 coupon for a product or service from her cart AND a chance to win a Kindle.

In general, shorter is better.

But the critical issue in getting people to do ANY survey is to show them “what’s in it for them.”

I’ve refused to answer 5-question surveys because it was “all about the marketer:”

• the survey didn’t offer any incentive for me to take it,
• it wasn’t conversational,
• the questions were clearly designed to get information the marketer could use to make money.

It’s OK to ask questions that will help you make money. After all, that’s the reason for doing the survey.

But if you do that in a way that shows the customer how you will use the results to provide VALUE to him or her, and if you make sure there are LOTS of questions about the CUSTOMER and what he or she wants (always lead with those), you’ll get a much better response.

So length is definitely one of the things that can make people angry, but so can bad questions, poor design, and lots of other things.

Here’s the bottom line:  If you do good surveys and keep the length reasonable (within 15 minutes), you should be able to get good results.

To make sure you can do good surveys, go here to get our survey system.

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